Business Rate Supplements Bill

I see the need for something that will satisfy the business community that a project is worthy and well managed, but I share the concerns of those who believe that imposing a board in every case might be difficult, inappropriate or unnecessarily bureaucratic. Under the terms of new clause 1, it is difficult to know who from the private sector side would want to volunteer to sit on such a board. We learn from new schedule 1 that there would be no remuneration, and we can imagine that in some cases the meetings would be long and frequent. Anyone considering sitting on such a board would want to know what their legal duties and responsibilities were and what the consequences might be if something went wrong. Would it be a board in the legal sense, on which a director sits only if he is aware that serious legal duties and requirements are placed on him, and aware of what provision is to be made for officer insurance, professional indemnity and all the other things that anyone placed in that position of trust deals with? If so, that would represent a labour due imposed on top of the cash charge that the business community will be invited to expend. It is bad enough that a company will have to pay the tax, but worse for it to be told that it must put up some people to sit on the supervising board so as not to make an even bigger mess of the scheme. That would mean that they were invited to give of their time free, on top of having to give their money to the project in question. I see certain difficulties in that. I assume that in line 2 of proposed subsection (1) of new clause 1, we do not need the word "to" twice, and that that is a typing error or misdrafting that could be dealt with. New schedule 1 provides what support there is for the idea of the board, but it is quite slim. We are told in paragraph 6 that the board's functions would be specified by regulations. If that idea were to go any further, those regulations would be of great interest to the House, as they are where the meat of the system would be. Currently, we know nothing about the intended responsibilities, duties or legal requirements, the degree of surveillance required or the necessary reporting, accountability and so on. We learn from the new schedule that the members of the board are to be appointed in the following way. One third are to be representatives from the affected local authority; one can understand that. However, only one third are to be representatives of those paying—the affected local business community. The remainder—one's mental arithmetic might run so far as to say the other one third—are to be""members appointed as thought appropriate by the relevant levying authority."" In other words, the authority seeking the money and imposing the tax on the local community could have two thirds of the board members. It could therefore win any simple majority vote and a lot of weighted majority votes up to the two-thirds threshold. That would give it effective control. I am sure that the framers of the new schedule have it in mind that the local authority will be well disposed towards the local community and want people of independence and stature on the board. However, that is not what the new schedule actually says.